🥣 Is cereal over?

Don’t sleep on this: Tech is gamifying your Z’s

If counting sheep hasn’t been helping you fall asleep lately, you might want to consider a spreadsheet.

No, seriously. According to The Wall Street Journal, people are using wearable tech to measure and track their sleep:

• The Oura Ring, which retails for $300 plus a monthly membership, uses infrared LED lights to track biometrics.
• The Whoop wristband requires a $250 annual membership and uses an app to track bodily stats.
• The Apple Watch has a sleep app that lets users track time spent in each sleep stage.

And today’s sleepyheads are using all sorts of tools to score more shut-eye and boost their numbers:

Mouth taping, sleep masks, blackout curtains, and smart alarm clocks are popular on social media — the hashtag #sleep has amassed 37.6B+ views on TikTok alone.

Where there are stats…

… there are people keeping score. So it’s not surprising that sleep tracking is being gamified.

Pokemon Sleep tracks sleep and rewards players with higher scores and more Pokemon depending on how they snooze. The app, released earlier this summer, has already been downloaded 10m+ times.

There’s also Sleepagotchi, an app that rewards players for sticking to their sleep goals, which has raised $3.5m in funding.

Too much of a good thing

While prioritizing healthy sleep habits and getting enough rest are vital to staying healthy, too much pressure on sleep can have the opposite effect.

Researchers have already coined the term “orthosomnia” to describe the “obsessive pursuit of optimal sleep metrics.”

And all that obsessing over sleep can lead to some serious anxiety, which — you guessed it — can make it hard to fall asleep.

First impressions start with your profile

LinkedIn as a social platform? A for effort, yet often despicable.

But LinkedIn as a job-hunting joint? Makes a lot of sense.

Considering it’s where career hustlers hang, we baked you this gleaming guide on how to spruce up your LinkedIn profile — and take your personal page from good to great.

Make your page superb:

• Write snappy headlines and summaries
• Choose the perfect picture
• Develop your content strategy (25 post ideas)
• Grow a neighborly network
• Harness LinkedIn messaging

Find gigs that fit. Articulate your worth.

McDonald’s is raising royalty fees for operators opening new franchise restaurants in the US and Canada. The increase, from 4% to 5%, is the first in nearly 30 years but won’t affect existing franchisees, who run ~95% of McDonald’s 13.4k US restaurants.

Amazon announced plans to start placing ads in Prime Video movies and TV shows starting in 2024. US Prime members can opt to pay an extra $2.99/month to go ad-free.

Warner Bros. Discovery is expanding the UK studio where Barbie and Harry Potter were filmed. The expansion, due to be completed in 2027, is expected to increase production capacity by over 50% and create 4k jobs.

Cisco is buying cybersecurity company Splunk for $28B. The all-cash deal shakes out to $157 per share — a 31% premium — and positions Cisco as a leader in AI-backed security.

Target launched a private-label kitchen brand called Figmint. Over half of the 250-item collection is under $10, and 95%+ of its packaging is plastic-free.

There’s a new sheriff in… Times Square’s subway station. And by sheriff, we mean the NYPD’s new 420-pound robot from manufacturer Knightscope, which can record video as it patrols during a two-month pilot.

The IRS will use info from sites like Ticketmaster and StubHub to tax resellers who made $600+ this year in an attempt to control exorbitant concert prices. (Lookin’ at you, Swift scalpers.)

Oof: Expend4bles pulled in  $8.3m during its box office debut, a franchise low. The cast has been unable to promote the film due to the ongoing actors’ strike.

The cereal industry’s forecast has no added sugar

In 2020, after years of declining sales, the cereal business saw a brief glimmer of hope — amid covid chaos, the comforting, shelf-stable goodness of a bowl of cereal experienced a resurgence.

Then normalcy returned, with the only “snap, crackle, pop” in the cereal aisle coming from executives’ crushed dreams.

How did we get here?

A look at the modern cereal business earned honorifics like “a slowly declining market” with a “depressed outlook” from The Wall Street Journal. Why?

• Breakfast is on the outs: Last year, only 35% of Americans ate a daily breakfast, per Statista data.
• When the meal happens, portability wins: Energy bars, protein shakes, and frozen breakfast options have all risen in popularity, much to cereal’s detriment.
• Fast food has seized the daybreak: Decades ago, McDonald’s Egg McMuffin was the lone AM option, but almost every major chain now serves breakfast — and the menu expansions keep on coming.

What’s next?

More spoonfuls of bad news, probably. Cereal sales normalized post-covid, dropping 8.7% in 2021, then settled at a more normal rate of decline (down 3.9%) in 2022.

But even as the market shrinks, cereal is still a multibillion-dollar prize for General Mills, Kellogg, and Post to battle over.

General Mills is currently winning, with America’s two highest-selling cereals — Honey Nut Cheerios and Cinnamon Toast Crunch — and a strong market-share lead on Kellogg (34.2% to 25.9%).

And its lead may yet grow — The Motley Fool says Kellogg is doing the “unthinkable” next month, as it splits off cereals from its larger empire.

BTW: How tall is Tony the Tiger? While freelancing for Kellogg, I once found an internal document stating he was 8 feet tall (the best fact I’ve seen in my life). But Frosted Flakes’ website now says he’s 6’3”. Hmm.

👩‍⚖️ On this day: In 1981, Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to hold a seat on the US Supreme Court, where she served for nearly 25 years.

🧑‍🎤 Wow: Did you know people can sing two notes at the same time?

📩 Must read: The Neuron helps 150k+ readers stay ahead of AI news, tools, and strategies to boost productivity at work.

📚 That’s interesting: Author Vauhini Vara has gone viral for work she wrote with the help of generative AI. Now she reflects on that process, and what it means for literature.

🐹 Aww: And now, the slo-mo you never knew you needed.

What are my weaknesses? How much time do you have? (Link)